Marking tight is Souths’ priority

TIGHT marking and converting chances, that is what Souths has focused on ahead of Saturday’s women’s Premier League Hockey match against defending premiers Lithgow Panthers.

Souths coach Damien Carter believes if his players can execute those aspects of their game, it will help them to achieve his goal of at least a 50 percent winning record over the first month of competition.

From three games thus far, Souths has a 4-3 win against Parkes and suffered close defeats to Confederates and Ex-Services.

In both those defeats Souths were hurt by missed chances and drops in intensity.

“When we control the ball with short passes, we play really well, but then we get away from our game plan and we play 10 minutes of crap,” Carter said.

“So our goal this week is stick to our game, and the girls know if they get out of it, we have to talk to each other and get back to it.

“All we need is goals, we can’t win with one goal in game. We proved that, we won with four goals against Parkes, so if we get a few goals against Lithgow down there, you never know.

“We can score goals and we can win if the girls do all the right things.”

Helping Souths’ bid to find the mark against Panthers will be the return of experienced duo Sarah Watterson and Tahlia Cranston.

While goalkeeper Kate Brown has been ruled out with a broken toe, replacement Hayley Rogers has prior Premier League experience.

Carter is unsure just who will line up for Panthers, but has identified Amanda Saladine as one rival player who Souths need to contain.

“You just never know who you are going to get against Lithgow, with a representative weekend off, you don’t know who they will have. But we can’t worry about them, we just have to concentrate on ourselves,” he said.

“We’ve got to mark them tight. We shut down [Ex-Services’] Chloe Barrett last week, she didn’t get a lot of the ball and that really helped us. We need to do that to Amanda Saladine.

“We watched them verse Pat’s in Parkes and it is a different side, a very young side and they counter-attacked really well with their speed. So we are going to have to mark really tight.

“The girls are confident, we are going in confident. They have lost their last two games and we’ve got a win, so they are going to the champing at the bit to beat us.”

Saturday’s game against Lithgow Panthers will commence at 1.30pm in Lithgow.